The crimes of the Dirty War during 1974 to 1983 when a fascist military dictatorship killed some 30,000 people and offered some of the young children of those killed to be adopted by military families and government supporters still trouble Argentina. Grandmothers marched to demand that their grandchildren be given to them. Now those children are grown, and some of them seek to know who their birth parents were and who they themselves really are. And some, when they learn the truth, have rejected it and choose to continue to be the children of their adoptive parents.

Argentine writer Hector Levy-Daniel takes an oblique approach to the experience of a child taken from her parent. Being Argentine, he has dealt with the Dirty War, but now he wants to focus on the reactions of those who have been through a similar experience. The social and political implications of Argentine class relationships he deals with in another part of the play.

Teresa is the wife of a wealthy businessman. She longs to have a child, but she and her husband cannot. So she arranges to have the baby daughter of a poor family kidnapped. Though the child Maria has some confusing early memories, she believes she is the biological daughter of Teresa, who has developed an elaborate description of the difficult pregnancy and birth she suffered in bringing Maria into the world. Teresa has a great sense of the dramatic when she tells it.

In flashbacks, we see Maria’s teen-age romance with a young man who works in her father’s factory. Given the class difference, they must hide their courtship from the town, and the young man, Pedro Coltinari, keeps pressuring Maria to tell her mother and father so they can be open with their relationship.

When her father dies, Maria, now fully grown, takes over the business. She is soon confronted with the threat of a strike by the workers. Pedro Coltinari, now also fully grown, with a wife and children – Maria never did tell her parents – is one of the leaders of the strike. His meeting with Maria about the workers’ demand to be paid in cash instead of company-store scrip is fraught, though neither gives any indication of their past relationship. We do see the implicit drama in it.

Maria’s mother Teresa hires a new maid, an older woman, Luisa, who just showed up one day. This upsets Maria, who fears she might be a spy for the workers come to listen in on any management plans. Eventually Luisa explains that, some years ago, her baby daughter had been stolen from her. She has been looking for her ever since. When she reached this town, she discovered that one of the young women was the age her daughter would have been now. She applies for work there. Teresa likes her cooking and insists on keeping her over Maria’s objections.  

Soon Luisa is convinced that Maria is her daughter. She embraces her joyfully. But Maria, however much she may have her own suspicions, refuses to believe Maria, to have anything to do with her, and orders her to leave. 

And Maria and Pedro seem to find a way to settle the strike and to in some way resolve their old relationship.

Jane Paradise makes Luisa’s drive to see her daughter in Maria intense, her joy when she thinks she has found her overflows, and her pain and despair as she collapses when Maria rejects her and sends her away in that long exit are heartbreaking. Jennifer Theby-Quinn’s Maria must deal with unwelcome surprises with a reaction often hidden under appearances. Theby-Quinn handles it all well. Michele Burdette Elmore finds things wonderfully grotesque in “mother” Teresa, all well modulated, with help from Michelle Siler’s costumes for her. Isaiah Di Lorenzo gives the handsome, manly Pedro Coltinari impressive self-control. In all, a very fine cast, with a very astute director, Philip Boehm, who also provided the natural-sounding translation. 

Patrick Huber’s scenic design, with some appropriate local touches thanks to Scenic Artist Cameron Tesson, provides both players and audience what they need to follow the action. Steve Carmichael’s lighting design isolates areas when needed while keeping them fully illuminated. Cecil “Cece” Entz handles Properties. Brian Macke is the Technical Director, and Patrick Siler is the Production Stage Manager.

Upstream Theater’s splendid Bitter Fruit becomes almost too moving at times. It’s great theatre. 

—Bob Wilcox

Photo by ProPhotoSTL.com
From the left, Jane Paradise as Luisa and Jennifer Theby-Quinn as Maria in Bitter Fruit.